


return

by castles_inthesky



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castles_inthesky/pseuds/castles_inthesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Sherlock returns to 221B, not for any reason in particular, but just because it draws him back like a moth to a flame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	return

**Author's Note:**

> just a random drabble i wrote in half an hour whoops
> 
> disclaimer: everything belongs to their respective owners

Sometimes Sherlock returns to 221B, not for any reason in particular, but just because it draws him back like a moth to a flame. He always waits for John to leave, and this time he watches his silhouette disappear into the bustle of the London streets. Something tugs in his heart when he sees the limp that John now walks with, but he dismisses it as quickly as he does the previous times. 

A key weighs heavy in his coat pocket, a trophy he snatched from his previous visits, and as the door unlocks Sherlock holds his breath. He presses his fingers onto the frosted glass pane on the door, and the light pressure opens it with a creak. He keeps his footfalls light as he ascends the stairs, skipping the 4th one because he knows it creaks. 

He expects to feel gradiose when he finally opens the door to his old apartment, like releasing the breath he didn’t realize he was holding should mean something, but it doesn’t. The apartment is wrapped in silence, a dead weight in the air too heavy to lift.

A quick sweep across the room with his eyes and Sherlock knows that nothing has been moved since the last time he came to visit. His blue dressing gown still lies draped over his armchair and the tables are still cluttered with books and case notes, his messy scrawl covering the dusty pages like ancient vines left to grown in an abandoned garden. His letters are still nailed to the wall with his penknife, and a layer of dust rests on the curve of his skull, not having been moved an inch since his departure. A weak anger flares inside him at the thought that John could disregard his belongings so, but he stops himself from reaching out and brushing the dust off. 

He treads across the sitting room, careful not to step on the creaky plank of wood he knows is there. His next stop is the bathroom down the hall. John’s toothbrush and toothpaste are standing in a cup at the edge of the sink, but he reaches out and opens the medicine cabinet. He runs his fingers over the bottles of meds they keep there, and a quick shake tells him that none of them are missing their content. _Old habits die hard_ – he offers a thin smile despite himself. It started out as suicide prevention, until it evolved into- whatever it is now. He wants to trust John, he really does, but he’s sure the only way to stop him from doing it is to throw out the entire cabinet and bury it under six feet of dirt. So until then, he reads the labels on each bottle, committing to memory their chemical composition before returning the bottles to their original positions, meticulously turning them so the labels face outwards (as John always does it). 

If Mycroft asks him about it he’ll shake it off with a bitter comeback and a wave of his hand, but he still remembers – in fact, he can’t forget. He still sees every single detail, smells the musky smell the pills give off, feels the initial panic coursing through his veins – he doesn’t forget when he walked in one day and saw John on the floor, curled in on himself, his features slack and an empty bottle of painkillers in his lax palms. He doesn’t forget when he’s standing outside John’s hospital ward, looking at nurses buzzing in and out, doctors coming and going. He doesn’t forget when John’s first words when he woke up was _‘why?’_

But for now, he closes the medine cabinet with a soft click and moves on. 

The bedroom is no different: he checks for for ropes and knives, opens the bedside cabinet and ejects the magazine from John’s gun to check no bullets are missing. He feels guilty for doing it, he really does, but he pushes the feeling aside and continues, shutting off his emotions as sharply and efficiently as the mechanical click of the magazine snapping back into the gun.

One day, he’ll stay long enough to see more of John than his back and the weary movement of his limbs, but today he makes sure everything is back in place, and that Mrs Hudson doesn’t see him leaving the cake (courtesy of Mycroft) in her fridge.


End file.
